McDuffies wrote:Oh, I always get a lot of tv that's not too interesting to draw to... I drew through a lot of Andy Griffith show and Gilligan's Island that way.Wanted to draw through Weird Science series too, but boobs distracted me.

There was boobs on the Weird Science tv series?

I like to work to those BBC quiz/panel shows like QI, Would I Lie to You, and 8 Out of 10 Cats. Witty banter that's easy to tune out when necessary.

"Just because we're amateurs, doesn't mean our comics have to be amateurish." -McDuffies

McDuffies wrote:Oh, I always get a lot of tv that's not too interesting to draw to... I drew through a lot of Andy Griffith show and Gilligan's Island that way.Wanted to draw through Weird Science series too, but boobs distracted me.

LibertyCabbage wrote:I don't watch TV much, but while I was sick in bed this past week I had a chance to watch my Invader Zim DVDs for the first time in a while. It's still a great cartoon.

The commentairy on those DVDs sort of ruined the show for me becuase they consist mostly of Vasquez complaining about how no one on the staff lived up to his expectations and the case/crew nervously laughing and dancing around the topic of how hellish it was working for him.

LibertyCabbage wrote:I don't watch TV much, but while I was sick in bed this past week I had a chance to watch my Invader Zim DVDs for the first time in a while. It's still a great cartoon.

The commentairy on those DVDs sort of ruined the show for me becuase they consist mostly of Vasquez complaining about how no one on the staff lived up to his expectations and the case/crew nervously laughing and dancing around the topic of how hellish it was working for him.

One of the things I specifically remember is Vasquez talking about how on the first day he got to the studio he insisted red cellophane be put on all the windows and one of the crew saying (in a "ha ha isn't that quirky please don't fire me" way) that the lack of normal sunlight made everyone miserable and gave some people Seasonal Affect Disorder.

So is that sort of thing (the diva-ness) why the show got axed so early? I always heard people complaining about how short a run it had and how his artistic genius was unappreciated by the unwashed masses.

I think the main factor was the cost of making the show. The high quality animation (which is even as a kid watching it I wondered how they could afford to pull off in a childrens TV show) was just too expensive to justify.

It's sort of a double edged sword because Vasquez 's ideosyncracies asside, I'm sure it was his pushing the people who worked for him so hard and never being satisfied with the quality that led to the show being so amazing, but also what led to it's being too expensive to keep going and everyone hating him.

I wouldn't have minded his high standards so much if he had had one good thing to say about the show during the commentaries. It was always "this effect didn't turn out how I wanted it" this or "I didn't really like the read on that line" that. And all the people around him desperately pointing out the good things about the show and him shutting them down. It was one of the most depressing things I've ever listened to.

There was definitely hostility between Nickelodeon and Vasquez, and allegedly the Nick executives frequently argued with Vasquez about making changes to the show. The most famous instance of this is when Nick refused to let Vasquez show GIR covered in blood, so Vasquez and his team hid images of the blood-covered GIR in several episodes of the show.

Here are some other factors I've heard thrown around:

- The show debuted in March 2001. After the September 11 attacks, Nickelodeon shifted towards more kid-friendly stuff, losing interest in having a violent, edgy show like Zim. Nick execs also made Vasquez edit a scene from the episode "Door to Door" because they said it resembled Ground Zero too much, and some scenes from the Christmas episode had to be edited because Nick considered them to be too violent.

- The show's main audience was teenagers and adults, while Nick had intended the show to be for kids

- Zim's heavy use of CG made it Nick's most expensive show to produce

- The Nick execs had a general wariness of the show's violence and dark themes

And you're right, there's definitely still a clamoring on the Internet for the show's return, and the show had its own convention in Atlanta last year called Invadercon. (Invadercon 2 is next month.) So, maybe Nick will rehire Vasquez to make more episodes someday. Apparently, they started showing reruns again a couple years ago, so who knows.

As for the DVD commentaries, I watched them when the DVDs came out around '05-'06, but I don't really remember them.

"Seems like the only comics that would be good to this person are super action crazy lines, mega poses!"

Ooh, ooh, I got another one. It became kind of a running joke/notjokebutreality at school that my friend and I would watch many many episodes of the Law & Order SVU marathon every Tuesday. My bf says he can't watch that show unless he starts the episode from the beginning, but I can come in at any time, even with two minutes before the episode end, and still be hooked and captivated by it.

My SVU friend and I occasionally greet each other by hollering "TUNG TUNG."

1. Community2. The mighty boosh3. Jamie at home4. How i met your mother (well old episodes at least)5. Mythbusters6. House

Don't even get me started on animated shows.

There's a fair bit of British in there. Must be a good list.

Komiyan wrote:Have I Got News For You is the best one. They had Shatner hosting the other day and it was GLORIOUS.

That was good.

We tend only to watch BBC, usually just the panel shows and the Saturday night shows like the Voice, Merlin, Dr Who and the Lottery program when its Dale Winton. Most nights we work our way through our box sets again and again. Mainly it's Friends, Red Dwarf, Gavin and Stacey but we also have Charmed (which only I watch) and Buffy, which we haven't watched in a while since it gets so depressing after Series 3. We recently borrowed (and will probably buy) Jeeves and Wooster which we'd never seen before but is brilliant.

Personally if they keep Steven Moffat write Dr Who I may have to stop watching and I normally love watching Dr Who. He recently had a big rant at everyone who says he's making Dr Who too complicated and called them (us) all stupid but I think he's forgetting he's suposed to be making the show for kids. Fair enough, write clever plots with twists and hints to the series finale but when your entire series is a barrage of approaching DOOM then there's nowhere near enough running in the show. And you've got to have the running. They wasted a perfectly good trip back in time where the could of had some serious "It's Hitler and the Nazis but not as you know them" fun because they through in a whole load of River Song exposition instead, bah!